When Sergio Marchionne was running Fiat, he advised people to not buy the electric version of the 500, Fiat’s “Italian Job” micro-car. Why? Because each “sale” would cost Fiat a lot of money as the electric 500 could not be sold for what it cost to build, plus a profit margin sufficient to make it worth building. It was too expensive – and too limited. It was for these reasons what people in the car industry call a loss leader – usually also a compliance car. The latter referring to a car that’s built solely to satisfy government regulatory requirements, that’s inevitably sold at a loss – because very few buyers want to pay for them.
Sergio’s gone now and Fiat’s bringing back the 500, which will only be available as a battery powered device this time. It will cost $34,095 – and the price you’ll pay for that is device that might go 149 miles on a full charge.
When the Fiat 500 (no “e”) was last available new, just before the event all-too-many people continue to refer to as the “pandemic” (it’s a mistake to refer to that event as such for the same reason it’s a mistake to use the word “vaccine” to describe the drugs that were and are being pushed on people) it cost about half as much and could go about twice as far (about 300 miles in city driving; 365 on the highway) in part because it weighed about 2,500 lbs., which made it one of the lightest new cars then available.
The battery powered 2024 500 will probably set a new record-holder for the smallest, heaviest new car ever offered for sale. Just 142 inches long, the Fiat is so small it makes a compact-sized sedan such as a Honda Civic seem like a full-size car in comparison. The latter is 184 inches long – or nearly four feet longer than the little Fiat. The only car that was just slightly smaller than the 500 was the no-longer-available Smart car made by Mercedes-Benz.
And it only seated two.
How much will the battery-powered 500e weigh? According to preliminary reports, something in the vicinity of 3,000 lbs. – the difference (vs. the Fiat 500 sans the “e”) being the weight of the batteries. These push up the weight of this micro car to nearly as heavy as a current mid-sized family car such as the 2024 Toyota Camry. It is 192.1 inches long – or 4.1 feet longer than the 500 – but only weighs 3,310 lbs., just slightly heavier than the battery-powered 500 “e.”
Yet the device is being heralded by the complicit car press as the “lightest EV in America” as well as “affordable” (because it is, relative to the $50k average price for a new device) and something spectacular because it goes “almost twice as far” as the last battery-powered version of the 500, which Fiat stopped trying to sell (here) just before the event that was a “pandemic” in the same way that what you’re forced to”contribute” to Social Security isn’t a tax precisely because it cost too much relative to how far it could go. 
The 2019 500 “e” had a best-case range of just a little over 80 miles on a full charge. Now you know why Sergio told people not to buy it.
Not that he had to do that.
Few did – for the obvious reason. Who willingly pays twice as much to get 50 percent less? That’s a good summary of the battery-powered, $34k and 149 mile range device that looks like the Fiat 500 but amounts to a total repudiation of the concept. As well as the point of the thing.
That being lightness, efficiency and affordability. The reasons for making small cars – or at least, used to be. Of course, that was before events such as catching a cold that 99.8 percent of the population didn’t die from were called “pandemics.”
It is boggling to witness the transitioning of what was, as recently as 2019, a $16k-ish economy car that almost anyone could afford into a battery powered device that carries what used to be considered an entry luxury MSRP heralded by the car press as something other than an idiocy and an outrage.
Fiat had trouble selling the 500 that wasn’t a device in this country because even though almost anyone could afford to buy it, most Americans wanted something bigger and were willing to pay more for it. So now the same car is being returned to the “market” (that term ought also to be retired in favor of something more etymologically honest since the market is not driving the proliferation of these devices) sans the one thing it offered that others didn’t.
That being a price tag well under $20k to start.
For that sum the buyer got a very practical little runabout that was perfect for city driving (it slots easily into parking spots) that could also venture out on the highway, if need be.
And for almost 400 miles, if necessary.
Even so, it didn’t sell well enough to keep it on the market and that’s why it no longer is. The only reason it’s coming back – as a device – is to serve as a compliance car for Stellantis, which is the corporate umbrella for not just Fiat but also Dodge, Ram and Jeep. The latter are also rapidly being force-transitioned into devices but in the meanwhile there is the necessity of complying with the almost here federal requirement (CAFE) that every manufacturer’s fleet average just shy of 50MPG. Ram 1500s and Jeep Grand Cherokees and Dodge Chargers (RIP) don’t. But the battery-powered 500 “e” will likely be credited by the regulatory apparat as delivering much more than that, via the trickery of “MPGe,” which makes an EV that only goes 149 miles seem like it goes much farther by claiming it delivers 100-plus “MPGe” (112 “MPGe” in the case of the 2019 500 “e”).
Can you see?
Sergio is probably glad he’s no longer around to see it. But we’re going to have to deal with it.
The good news is that more and more people are seeing – and no longer believing. Sales of devices are petering out, chiefly because those who wanted one already have one – and the rest don’t.
The last device Fiat tried to sell didn’t – an after six years, Fiat stopped trying. How long will it take this time?
. . .
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The House revolts against EPA’s EeeVee mandates:
‘The House of Representatives on Dec. 6 passed a bill that will block a proposed rule by the EPA to effectively mandate that most cars produced in the United States be fully electric by 2032.
‘The bill, H.R. 4468, dubbed the Choice in Automobile Retail Sales Act of 2023, passed the House by a 221–197 vote. That included total GOP support; Democrats, meanwhile, sought to have the bill sent back to committee.
‘The bill would block an EPA rule that would require roughly 68 percent of cars manufactured in the United States be fully electric by 2032. The rule has won the support of President Joe Biden’s administration.’
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/house-votes-overturn-bidens-ev-mandate
‘Biden’ has vowed to veto the bill, if it makes it through the Senate (doubtful). But it sets a great precedent for later.
Here is the roll call. All Republicans, plus five Democrats, voted YEA.
https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2023703
It pays to thank your rep if he/she voted in favor … and politely bust the chops of the EeeVee pushers, telling them that EeeVee Fever is ‘so over.’ And so will be their political careers, if they take our liquid-fueled cars away.
More Alice in Wonderland: There is no legitimate authority for the 436 Federal Agencies to create new law. Some Representatives are attempting to stop some rules, mandates, rather than addressing the core issue of agency unbridled power. Congress has become the lapdog of “Agencies”, completely ridiculous.
“Despite its passage by the House, the legislation seems unlikely to pass
muster in the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority. And even if
it did pass the Senate, President Biden has promised to veto the bill.”
https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies
The House can cut off EPAs funding.
They won’t – unless the people cut off all funding of government.
The con-gress is a willing partner in our enslavement.
There is a reason for this seemingly madness: Congress has
removed itself from responsibility (at the next election) and
can blame the agencies for imposing hardships on the sheeple.
It is inaccurate to say that the original Fiat 500 could go almost 400 miles. It could go virtually any distance (until the engine blew, or 40K miles, which ever came first) because it would only take 3 minutes to refill the tank at any petrol station.
Hi Liberty,
Yes, absolutely – and I’ve made the same point repeatedly. An EV’s short range is compounded by the serially long recharging. Own one of these things and you’ll be charging it almost literally continuously. As opposed to stopping once a week for a tank of gas – for 3-5 minutes.
An EV’s short range is compounded by the serially long recharging. Own one of these things and you’ll be charging it almost literally continuously.
An EV is like a patient perpetually connected to life support, and just as viable…
Great article Eric. I work for Panasonic.
I was actually involved in the development of the steering wheel switches for the Fiat 500 BEV since it was launched in 2020 in Italy. I got a free trip to Turin Italy in 2019 during development out of the deal. I’d never been out of North America before, so now I’m officially a seasoned snob.
By the way – nobody in Turin has ever heard of “Alfredo” sauce.
Once of Panasonic’s core principles is “courageous authenticity”
So during my reviews, I always bring up that courageous authenticity is me bringing up how utterly ludicrous this pipe dream of switching to even 25% BEVs in the US by 2030, or 2035, or whatever arbitrary year they come up with is to everybody that will listen.
Courageous Authenticity is saying what most everybody is already thinking, but is afraid to say because if may “offend” some central planner worshiping, deeply unimpressive, ass-kisser.
You’ve got it Eric: Courageous Authenticity.
I could get you into a soul sucking, redundant data entry, multinational corporate waste of a life gig in exchange for a “Stable” salary – right up until the switch to BEVs happen and 90% of us overpaid data entry clerks (pretty much everybody in automotive engineering that works for any multinational corporation) gets laid off.
You would be amazed at how many people with the brains to know better think this is just going to magically work itself out. The central planners have it covered.
Not sure where to put the “ultimate battery breakthrough for super cheap” point in the Gantt Chart, but I’ve been hearing about it for decades.
I take the chance to say, even in front of Executive VPs, that these BEV volumes in the future that we’re projecting are pure fiction, and not even plausible fiction.
Most people in the industry don’t seem to grasp that $50,000 average sedans today, and future mandated BEVs costing substantially more, are not a career ending problem.
If only the rich afford cars, then the rich have no need for all these factories producing all these cars for the plebs, nor all those jobs that go with them.
So be proud of your courageous authenticity.
Good morning, Blake – and thank you for the kind words!
I might just be cranky by nature. But my crankiness stems from outrage – and I’m not the kind of guy who allows such things to pass. In part because I am outraged by them, of course. But also because I understand that if outrages are allowed to pass then more and worse will come. It is why I absolutely refused to wear that filthy rag – the “mask” – because I understood almost as soon as these began to appear that they were just for openers and that if people – enough people – had refused to wear them in the beginning, the whole thing would have become absurd within weeks and collapsed around the same time. One never complies his way out of being bullied. It is better to take a punch, if need be – and hit back – than (pardon me language) to get bent over and fucked in the ass. Over and over again.
Hi Blake,
Along the lines of disappearing jobs if only the rich can afford cars, decades ago Henry Ford was bragging to Walter Reuther – then president of the UAW – that he envisioned the day when the entire assembly process would be done by robots. Reuther replied “well Mr. Ford, I hope those robots will be able to buy your cars.”
Regarding the “ultimate battery breakthrough” that all of here know will never happen, I approach it from the charging side. I’m retired from the local electric utility and guarantee there’s no way the grid can supply that amount of power to be delivered in short bursts without dumping the circuit. Would need a substation at every charging location, along with reliable base load generation, not from windmills, solar panels, or Unicorn farts.
This post reminds me of the Soviet Union and how their “market” for new cars was basically nothing more than a Lada sedan that could barely get out of it’s own way. The more the car manufacturers cave to the environmentalist wackos, the less choice consumers will have, and the more bored with new car introductions Eric will be! Oh joy, another new egg-shaped cabin hauling around a plethora of battery cells! We are SO happy to have “choice!” We’ll disregard the other similarities today to the old Soviet Union.
Eric – Didn’t Fiat have a problem with the 500 and the engines going splody?
IIRC, those were really pricey at the time. If Sergio had put a sub-$15k price tag on the vehicles like the 500 deserved, people would have bought the car and run it while it lasted.
I still see the last gen Focus on the roads around where I live despite the recall by Ford.
Hi Roscoe,
The optional turbo engines tended to use oil but the standard engines seem to last a long time. The price you pay is The Slows. But a slow car can be a lot of fun to drive fast, if you know what I mean!
Everything we have feared and Eric (and a few others here) predicted is true.
Big Car Data: Insurance insider warns they want to force you into an EV, ban insurance for petrol cars, and track you
https://joannenova.com.au/2023/12/big-car-data-insurance-insider-warns-they-want-to-force-you-into-an-ev-ban-insurance-for-petrol-cars-and-track-you/
“According to GeoffBuysCars an insider at a large European insurance company has spilled the beans. Being a car lover himself, the insider wants to warn the world that the plans are well advanced. The insurance giants want to collect all your data as you drive so they can adjust the premiums accordingly and instantly. If you drive a bit too fast, it’ll cost you (especially when 20-mile-an-hour-zones spread to everywhere). Your EV will report your offenses to the police and the insurance company. How good with that be?
GeoffBuysCars has translated the insider report “doing the rounds of Europe” into English (hear him below). I’ve searched for any news reports or confirmation and of course, found almost nothing at all about the insider. But a story from Allianz on October 17th suggests he’s right on the money.
…
I work in the IT department of a very large renowned insurance company headquartered in Germany. Unfortunately when I tell my circle of friends and relatives about my projects, they dismiss as conspiracy theory. Many people don’t see or understand what will happen to us with this great digitalization Revolution especially the possible dangers or misuse. Here is a small excerpt of the pilot projects that we are working on… the digitized car pilot projects which are already underway in the next 10 years.
It will no longer be possible to insure old cars. You’ll be forced to buy a digital car.
Obviously [says Geoff] we know that electric cars are all connected you can no longer have a simple charger. Your charger has to be smart so the charger knows how much you’re charging … and I and many others have been saying that it’s a red flag that you have to use an app on your phone to charge your car.]
Big-brother, police, surveillance.… these cars are online 24/7 and in real time in touch with the insurance and traffic authorities for remote surveillance and surveillance of the authorities and that’s no joke. Depending on your driving style the time and the speed the type of driver, your insurance premium will automatically adjust (i.e. if you drive too fast or are too risky you will not only pay a fine to the magistrate but your insurance premium automatically increase). So let’s say you register your car to drive at night you’re a nighttime worker you get a higher premium and your car automatically knows that and feeds it back to the insurance company …
With the coming technological advances, digital ID and digital currency, we will be able to check the liquidity in real time via interfaces with banks and credit institutions as well as the tax circumstances of each customer.
They will have the power to stop any cars carrying “politically exposed people”. What could possibly go wrong?”
An electric Fiat? Yeah. Right. This has the potential to make obsolete jokes about Lucas electricals.
It boggles the mind.
I really enjoyed driving my 1978 FIAT 131 Brava.
First new car I ever bought.
I do not remember price, but it was inexpensive (very affordable).
Unibody construction was very light.
DOHC hemi head engine.
Single Weber carburetor.
5 speed stick (5th gear being overdrive).
Factory (“works” ) team, Abarth prepped, was world rally champion, their major competitor in class being Datsun 510s.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Fiat_131_goodwood.jpg/300px-Fiat_131_goodwood.jpg
Gilmer belt which drove OH camshafts needed to be replaced at specified intervals, per mfgr. maintenance manual. Stupid Americans (but I repeat myself) would “defer maintenance” by not replacing the belt, then blame FIAT when the belt broke and ruined the top end of the engine. You know, valves crash into pistons, etc.
Así es la vida.
You *can* pull a trailer with a FIAT 500, though.
https://www.earthtravelerteardroptrailers.com
Just has to be the “right kind” of trailer, i.e ., very
light advanced design.
This should be fun then.
MG4 EV
https://www.mg.co.uk/new-cars/mg4-ev
Cant see many who would pay 35 grand for an electric clown car. It is safe to say, ‘those who wanted one already have one.’ You did a great job destroying the myths and fallacies of the EV fantasy Eric. Society owes you a debt for being one of the hammers that smashed their utopian imaginings. 35 grand is steep for any car IMO. I still place some value on the things money should buy, even if the money changers don’t. You can buy 3 new gas side by sides (similar to that fiat) for that kind of money, with some change to spare.
I bet you that this is a CARB compliance car. Several states now use CARB’s rules, and CA is the US’ biggest car market, and these rules require some percentage of cars sold to be EV’s. If you don’t sell enough EV, you can’t sell ICE vehicles, and Stellantis isn’t doing great on EV sales.
The last time the 500e was sold here in CA, you could lease one for $80/month, which included the taxes and fees! For the price of a cell phone plan, you can have a city car which is perfectly adequate if you live in a dense area. Of course, you’d have a real car for when you needed to travel farther.
“…Before the event all-too-many people continue to refer to as the “pandemic” (it’s a mistake to refer to that event as such for the same reason it’s a mistake to use the word “vaccine” to describe the drugs that were and are being pushed on people…”
I’m reiterating, but the mistake is to believe the term “pandemic” denotes the deaths of millions of billions. That’s not what it means. There may be many who believe that, but it’s no different than the fact that many people obnoxiously use the descriptor “literally” before nearly everything they say. “Literally” doesn’t mean what they think it means, either.
In regards to the Fiat, at least they’re heading in the correct direction, rather than making “performance” or “luxury” vehicles. Now, if they’d reduce the price to about 1/3 of what they want now, they might even sell a few.
Also, Eric, the Forum seems to have an “expired certificate”, which means that you still can get to it, but your browser will likely give you some trouble first. Just FYI. 🙂
The propagandists purposefully chose the phrase “the pandemic” to connote the deaths of millions or billions in order to stoke dread fear around the world (it was probably focused grouped well in advance). However, even if the current definition of that word is applied (i.e. “a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease over a whole country or the world at a particular time”), the use of “pandemic” is still grossly inappropriate. The “event” was people experiencing common respiratory symptoms that typically occur during the late fall and winter months (times of significantly diminished sunlight). This “infectious disease” only resides on a computer hard drive derived from a BS algorithm and required a bogus PCR test to generate billions of false positives of a disease that has never actually been proven to exist. The “event” is really no different from the “events” of the 1/6 “insurrection,” “the mostly peaceful BLM protests,” “anthropomorphic global climate change,” “white supremacy,” “Russian collusion,” “Co2 is a pollutant,” etc.
All of these government/regime media narratives are bald-face (or more appropriately mask-faced) lies.
Exactly, Mister –
It’s a mistake to not understand the way the Left chooses – and uses – words. Leftists understand that when the average person hears “pandemic” they think of a mass death event. I understand (as BaDnOn points out) that a “pandemic” is defined as a worldwide infectious contagion, not necessarily deadly. But the point is that most people associate deadly with “pandemic” and hence the Left’s use of that word to define an event that was nothing of the sort.
At worst, it was an unusually severe flu that could be deadly if a person was already in a weakened condition, whether as a result of old age or some other chronic health condition. This has always been the case. Just the same as falling down has always been more of a threat to elderly people because they tend to be frail and so their bones (such as hips) are more apt to break from a fall that a young person would just shrug off.
“Just the same as falling down has always been more of a threat to elderly people because they tend to be frail and so their bones (such as hips) are more apt to break from a fall that a young person would just shrug off.”
That reminds me of a joke I recently heard. Want to hear a good way to determine if you are old or not? If you fall down and people laugh, you’re not old yet. If you take a spill and people are concerned, you’re a geezer.
The “pandemic” turned everyone frail and old. Symptoms that would normally be shrugged off were suddenly cause for grave concern. People I worked with who got a runny nose tested the shit out of themselves trying to get a positive reading. It was surreal.
Falling down is an excellent analogy!
I’ll go one step further and say that it was a “covid me-too freakout.” This was a mental and propaganda worldwide event. If the China-Italy-NYC dominoes of freakout didn’t occur, nobody would have even know anything was happening with a novel common cold.
Eric, Mr. Liberty et al,
Yes, you’re right about the elderly. And the Kung Flu wasn’t particularly deadly if you weren’t in a weakened condition. Falling down and breaking her leg is exactly what my mom did. Then they put her in a “rehabilitation facility”, made roommates with a sick woman. She caught COVID and was dead within a few weeks. But you’re right. She was elderly and had an autoimmune disease.
My dad, who is in his early 70s, got sick about the same time and was in the hospital for a week, along with my mom. The hospital gave them both a battery of tests, including for other coronaviruses, influenzas, parainfluenzas, rhinoviruses and adenovirus. All negative, except for SARS-CoV-2. My dad eventually recovered after going home. My mom never did. I had them both take periodic and multiple rapid antigen tests, which were all positive at that time. Later, when my dad had fully recovered, he tested negative, as did I and my GF, when we felt quite healthy.
I thought I was going to kick the Kung-Flu’s ass, myself. I was heathy, and ran 2 miles nearly every day, went to the gym, and ate healthy. I still do. I supplemented with vitamin-D and a smorgasbord of other things, and still do. The initial illness could be best described as bizarre and unusual, and eventually I would endure the Long COVID, which was more debilitating than anything I’d ever experienced.
These weren’t just “common respiratory symptoms”.
My girlfriend was completely bedridden for 5-days, after which I took her to get infused with monoclonal antibodies. She then steadily recovered, but she would concur that it was a highly unusual illness. We both tested positive, via PCR, at the time. I had 2 negative tests in the months before then. She, being a teacher, was tested every week, and they had always been negative, until then. We caught the illness from her daughter (23 at the time), who was wrecked for about 4 days.
There was a guy at my place of employment who got sick while camping. He was in physically exquisite condition and did a lot of exercise, and was also an outdoor survival enthusiast. But when he came down with the ‘Rona, he was essentially bedridden in his tent, barely able to walk over to tend the fire and cook his survival rations. His “friend” offered no help, and was disappointed that they weren’t out foraging for food and whatnot.
I saw him a couple weeks after it all began, and he figured he was “mostly recovered”, and he told us of the horrors of his illness.
Eventually, many months later, we’d learn he’d killed himself. What I heard was that he never fully recovered, and was unable to live as he did previously. Sadly, he chose to end it all rather than live in this way.
Now, you’re all right in that this pandemic wasn’t exceedingly deadly. But it was a pandemic. There was certainly a “plandemic” as well, with devastating results of its own. I never advocated for, and will always fight, such dubious and harmful “interventions” as the masks. lockdowns and the rest.
It’ evident to me, even just from personal experience, that there was a novel illness going about. That’s on top of the mountain of scientific evidence. There was a pandemic, regardless of who advocated for the use of the term.
I know I’m just batting the beehive here, but I think I don’t give a fuck. I’m both a scientist and an advocate for liberty. I stand alone all-too-often, but I will continue to stand.
I know you want to believe, but you’ve been duped. There was a multi-billion dollar propaganda apparatus put in place to specifically stoke dread fear around the world and it was effective on you.
“It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” ― Mark Twain
Christ, man, I’m not Fox Mulder. I’m not even Trent Reznor. I don’t WANT to BELIEVE anything. I want to know the truth. So far, all of my experiences and researches indicate that there was a new viral illness that went global. Also, “the authorities”, as they often are, were prepared with a toybox full of nightmares to make the situation worse. Simple as that.
“It’ evident to me, even just from personal experience, that there was a novel illness going about. That’s on top of the mountain of scientific evidence. There was a pandemic, regardless of who advocated for the use of the term.” -BaDnOn
There is no mountain of scientific evidence. It’s a made up thing residing only on a hard drive “in silico.” The whole things was supported and perpetuated by bullshit tests (if I use the word “assays” it of course sounds much more authoritative and believable) which are designed to give false positives. It’s made-up, not different from say RLS (“restless leg syndrome”), non-24 or “cancer-causing” HPV, etc. It’s disease mongering so that the rent-seeking Big Pharma/Med can bilk the public.
Mr. Liberty,
I will address the evidence, tests, research and molecular bio sooner or later here. Only so much time in a day. Quickly, though I haven’t studied it in detail, I knew a girl who got HPV (not from me!) and she then developed (luckily treatable) cervical cancer, so I’m not highly skeptical of that connection at this time. Whether someone should get an HPV vaccine is another matter.
“I knew a girl who got HPV and she later developed cervical cancer.” I suppose she learned this from a Big Pharma “assay,” no doubt. This reminds me of how everybody I knew had a story about how a good friend died from “covid” and that’s how they knew it was real (oh and how could I be so insensitive to assert it was not the deadly disease they so wanted it to be?). Whenever I’d challenge them, it would inevitably turn out to be an uncle of somebody that they saw a post about on facebook.
Aside from that, there this logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc.
No, Mister. Genital warts. They were her boyfriend’s cock (from the first time, in the dark…) and then appeared on her. Dig? Then she had other problems, and pap smears, and cancer diagnoses and treatments. Luckily she’s now fine, 20-some years later.
Again, the mechanisms, if they are well known or studied are as yet unknown to me, but she wasn’t the first or last to experience that succession of events.
So post hoc ergo propter hoc, then?
Your story sounds a lot like the Seinfeld gonorrhea from a tractor seat episode. I suppose you examined her and performed a biopsy to confirm HPV?
“Genital warts. They were her boyfriend’s cock (from the first time, in the dark…) and then appeared on her. Dig? Then she had other problems, and pap smears, and cancer diagnoses and treatments.” As a scientist is this really what you’re relying on to (a) prove the existence of HPV and (b) that HPV causes cancer?
.Mister,
“I suppose you examined her and performed a biopsy to confirm HPV?”
What the fuck would it matter to you? It would never matter how much evidence I presented for anything (though I’m still going to present some things on this site for those who will listen).
I’d just get more lawyer-speak and you confirming your steadfast adhesion to ignorance.
And that’s fine! Stay ignorant. Looks great on you. Wear it proudly.
Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world understands things like viruses and molecular biology, and they’re not stuck in a perpetual philosophy class! They are and will make use of this knowledge, and you can throw Latin at it tedium ad nauseum, ad infinitum, and it’s going to get you nowhere except the Dark Ages.
A bit of a hysterical reaction to me challenging your evidence for the existence of HPV and its carcinogenic effect, don’t you think?
This kind of talk always precedes a cop out: “It would never matter how much evidence I presented for anything. . .”
Either you have evidence to prove these things, or it’s an unproven theory (and there’s nothing wrong with that, so long as one does not pass it off as proven), or it’s just blind faith in the “science.”
Hi Mister,
One of many things about the event that was marketed as a “pandemic” that immediately suggests a fraud is the sudden drop-off (according to government reporting) of deaths attributed to flu (and pneumonia) during the event that was marketed as a “pandemic.” This – according to what I’ve read – has never before occurred and it suggests “COVID” is the flu, rebranded.
So many overtly, obviously dishonest aspects of the way the event was presented (e.g., the clearly deliberate hyping of “cases” and the deliberate attempt to equate in the public mind a “case” with a probable death; the deliberate refusal to adjust policy when it became clear that this bug – whatever it was – was not a serious threat to the vast majority of the otherwise healthy population) along with the obvious maliciousness of “masking” and the pushing of drugs on people that I cannot and will not pretend this was something other than coordinated event designed to accomplish evil ends.
Calling it a “pandemic” confers a legitimacy on this event it does not deserve.
Yes. Also, your reporting from the hospital in Roanoke comes sharply to mind, which looked like a ghost town during the “pandemic.”
Eric,
You have any idea how difficult it has been being a libertarian scientist is, especially in the last few years? I’d rather be a car guy.
I have to fight against the shit coming down from our Overlords as well as the shit coming up from the populace as a response. One of those responses has been a complete rejection of actual science in all forms.
That won’t end well. I imagine it’ll be a little like the “Civil War”, in which the North controlled all of the manufacturing.
I find this more compelling now than I did 3-4 years ago. YMMV. It’s from the perspective of black Rastafarians vs. “white European supremacy”, and some on here will have major conniptions about that, but you could easily substitute libertarians vs. “the System” in each instance and it would remain germane.
Science is seen as Babylon’s tool. It is part of technocratic imperialism. Rastafari try to turn away from the materialism, mass media, and commodity fetishism of white European supremacy. There is an antipathy to white man’s ideas. When the sociologist Leonard E. Barrett attended a Nyabinghi, he was accosted for carrying cameras and tape recorder, which were called the tools of Babylon. Rastafari prefer natural things, living ‘naturally’, which means in accordance with their interpretation of ‘the laws of nature’. This can mean that Rastafari can be sceptical of some forms of biomedicine, such as vaccinations. Science and technology are seen as artificial and unnatural. They make evil things like weapons of mass destruction. They are a means of enslaving man to machine, so that he is unable to do things for himself, like Africans were when they were used as slaves.
I don’t see anybody’s “complete rejection of actual science in all forms.” What I see is a new conciseness and rejection of the sophistry that’s constantly peddled.
I see it as a clamor for the actual application of the scientific method, which is not what we get from Big Pharma/Med or the other propagandists out there.
Have you forgotten about “trust the science” or “I am the science” -Fauci? How about “don’t do your own research”? How about CO2 is a pollutant, or the oceans are “boiling.” The vast majority of what is claimed out there are lies.
Scientific “facts,” by definition must withstand perpetual scrutiny and repeatability. That may be exhausting, but it’s just the way it is and will always be. Otherwise, it ain’t scientific.
Hi BaDnOn,
Yup. One of the after-effects of the past three years is growing general skepticism about everything. Because it seems to be (and frequently is) the case that “experts” cannot be trusted and what we’ve been told isn’t true. Worse, it’s deliberately deceptive.
I grew up around doctors and avoid them now. Yes, in extremis I’d go see one. But I take everything they say with a boulder of salt. Trust generally has been eroded and cynicism has taken its place. Some healthy skepticism (as in the case of due diligence) is salutary because it acts as a check on foolishness but it can be corrosive to a society/culture when it becomes definitive and I think we’re there now.
The only answer I can come up withis to start over. One person at a time. One community at a time. We have one such here!
Bizarre. Unusual. Highly unusual. Defined as…? Bleeding from the eyes or anus? Limbs falling off? Nope. Just common respiratory symptoms of varying degrees of severity. People got really sick like this before 2020 and will continue to do so forever. The “novelty” factor was/is a verbal trick. In the sense that, it’s true that (arguments that viruses don’t exist aside, let’s just refer to it as illness) what makes you sick is something your body is not already immune to or strong enough to resist. So, to you, it’s “novel” but not in the sense of never seen before. Giving colds and flus brand names for the purpose of creating a “pandemic” out of an annual event similarly abuses language. There’s a pattern here, along with “vaccine”, “safe and effective”, etc.
This is the problem with believing in “it” or them:
https://www.infowars.com/posts/here-we-go-again-cdc-director-tells-public-to-take-covid-vaccines-social-distance-wear-masks/
From link:
Despite evidence demonstrating Covid-19 jabs did nothing to stop the transmission or spread of the virus, the CDC director went on to urge the public to “get vaccinated,” in addition to urging Americans to “wear a mask.”
“To protect yourself and your family this holiday season, take the steps that we do every year to protect ourselves,” Cohen stated, bizarrely going on to suggest masks and social distancing were yearly routine precautions.
Hi Funk,
Did you notice the psychopath smirk she couldn’t hide when she pitched the “vaccines”?
Yeah. She also looks like someone/someth8ng wearing a rubber mask. Her “cheeks” protrude strangely. It’s like watching a lizard from “V.”
Funk Doctor,
Firstly, things that were bizarre?..
For me, the entire course of the illness, beginning with a most peculiar sinus pain. Then there came feeling winded with only a small amount of exertion. The way my heart rate stayed in the 80s for a few days, day and night, making it difficult to sleep, was certainly unprecedented in my life. I believe there was one day where I felt somewhat “normal” flu symptoms, which were nausea and lethargy. But there was a feeling that I could describe only as the illness being “unnatural”. Normally, even if you get a flu and are puking, and even if it hurts internally, somehow it is familiar. With the Kung Flu, it was all incredibly unfamiliar.
Lastly, one unmistakable symptom that truly set COVID apart from other illnesses was the loss of smell/taste. My GF and I only experienced loss of smell, but it was PROFOUND. I looked on in bewilderment as she told me she could no longer smell anything, even a jar of mentholatum when she held it right up to her face. I followed suit a couple days later.
Now, sometimes you somewhat lose your sense of smell due to congestion. Having allergies, I know well what that’s like. But my nasal passages were perfectly clear, and I couldn’t smell a damn thing for about 2 weeks. Then, I slowly recovered. Many people experienced something similar around that time. Some took MONTHS to recover smell/taste. A few never did. Go ask anyone so affected if they’ve ever experienced THAT before 2020. I guarantee, it’ll be a rarity.
Regarding that Gesundheitsfuhrer: Me believing in “it” doesn’t mean I have to believe HER or anything she says. Personally, I will continue to wash my hands and stay away from sick people. I won’t be taking any experimental transfection injections or wearing a mask.
Because someone uses some kind of premise to further their ends doesn’t always mean that the premise is false.
For example:
Premise: People are murdered by others using firearms.
“Solution”: Turn in all your firearms.
Premise: Many people are obese.
“Solution”: Eating meat is now illegal.
Premise: Carbon dioxide absorbs infrared energy.
“Solution”: Drive an EV before you burn the world.
All those premises are facts. Doesn’t mean I accept the given “solutions”.
Still nothing as bizarre or unusual as bleeding from the eyes or anus or limbs falling off. The loss of taste/smell thing isn’t novel or unusual either, no matter the severity or duration. It happens and happened before with respiratory illness. Such a thin reed.
Accepting the premise of the one virus doesn’t make it a “fact.” It does, however, start you on a slippery slope towards all that followed. Finding your footing becomes very difficult indeed.
Your mostly completely makes sense comment addles my useless brainwashed idiotic brain that’s been turned to mush.
Can’t be helped these days.
I’ve gone all Joe Biden. All the way to Plaid!
Makes perfect sense.
Just more American assholes are to blame, just like the rest of the world.
Peace
NFW
Stellantis tells us what it really thinks about the Fiat 500e:
‘Thursday, Stellantis announced an agreement with EV charging technology company Ample to “establish a partnership in electric vehicle battery charging technology capable of delivering a fully charged electric vehicle battery in less than five minutes.”
‘That’s fast. How the pair will accomplish that is by using Ample’s technology to swap out an empty battery and replace it with a fully charged battery.
‘Ricardo Stamatti, Stellantis senior vice president of charging and energy, said in a news release that the first car in the battery-swapping program will be an electric Fiat 500.’
https://www.barrons.com/articles/chrysler-stellantis-nio-ample-ev-battery-range-charging-9489237e
First, the battery-swap tech is vaporware. Second, it’s not gonna be cheap. Third, even if’s one latch to release and replace it, it’s not gonna happen in five minutes.
And the magical thinking marches on …
The battery swap “solution” is really an admission of defeat.
Fully charged EV batteries don’t just fall out of the sky, anyhow – most likely they come from discharged batteries from previous EVs that have had their batteries replaced, at which point these batteries need to recharge for significantly longer than five minutes before being ready for a swap. The battery swap scheme depends on there being a sufficient number of fully charged batteries available at any given time, which won’t work without a huge backlog of batteries, which costs a lot of money. Lack of standardisation of batteries means model-specific batteries, which means that this is a non-starter. Forced standardisation, on the other hand, would potentially hamper innovation (although there really isn’t much innovation going on in the EV space, Tesla’s gimmicks notwithstanding).
And obviously, the battery is probably the most expensive part of the EV – who would want to play the battery lottery by swapping a battery in good condition with one that might be in poor condition? The typical “solution” to this problem is to require that people lease the battery instead, thus leaving people to depend on a vital component they don’t even own in order for their car to work! But I suppose that owning nothing makes people happy, so…
‘The battery swap “solution” is really an admission of …’ — Stufo
a. Defeat
b. Desperation
c. Brain damage
d. All of the above
Choose carefully, my friends.
Snobs buy obnoxious useless crap to demonstrate their superiority. Then there were those who dared duh vaxx to kill them. Good riddance.
If you’re really concerned about the environment, you’d be pushing small “Cheapster” cars like the non-electric Fiat 500.
These kinds of cars take fewer resources to build, need less gasoline to run, can be kept running for 10-plus years, and most every component can be easily recycled when it’s time to replace them.
As a mid-Gen X denizen, I remember when Cheapsters basically ruled the road in the 80s and 90s. While many were penalty boxes on wheels, and many were utter garbage, they weren’t at all expensive, managed to get the job done of moving from point A to point B most of the time, could be cheaply and easily fixed (often by you the owner), and even if completely trashed, sold for enough money to buy one that was running.
We may have had quite a few really lousy cars, but we had cars—so we could move about independently at the tender age of 16 to truly get a solid start on “adulting” by being able to hang out with peers, date, work, pay for and maintain a car, and learn something about how cars work—as well as have something to look forward to in terms of growing up.
One thing for sure, it’s as ugly as the old Fiat 500. And what’s worse, any young man who drives it ain’t getting laid anytime soon.
Hi Mike,
A buddy of mine’s mom has a 500 – not the “e” version – and she loves it. For her, the small size/easy maneuvering is a big plus. She also got it for $15k, brand new – even more of a plus. This was just six years ago. And here we are, staring down the barrel of a more than doubling of thew price for the same thing – which is actually less, sine it only goes half as far.
As I always say about EVs, they cost twice as much and go half as far. Now I need to add that they weight twice as much!
Another electric city car. Or perhaps a “suburban” car? Limit the thing to 60 MPH, take out the highway crash defense equipment and sell it as a second vehicle that’s cheap to run.
But gasoline isn’t the expensive part of car ownership. Insurance, registration, road taxes… these are why EVs will continue to flounder. Not to mention having space to keep multiple vehicles. Walk around your average mid-century suburban neighborhood, post war. Outside of the big cities like NYC and Chicago, lots were huge. Land was cheap and people were building further out. Big lots could easily hold an outbuilding or detached garage, plenty of space to keep extra vehicles. That all changed in the 1970s as inflation and interest rates skyrocketed, and home buyers were paying back the bank, not paying for land. Lot sizes shrank, neighbors were within whispering distance and HOAs became the norm. Cars became hidden, not permitted to be seen by your neighbors. No room to wrench either. Just forget about your detached anything other than maybe a Toughshead. And who could blame anyone? Your neighbor’s used car lot, leaking fluids all over the street, was an eyesore. So the HOA passed new rules and brought out the little enforcer in everyone. When interest rates came back down, the lot sizes stayed small, as did the HOA. Now that money went to the builders and their investors, not the banks. And the land became too valuable to sell, at least to you and me. Now it’s an “investment” and everyone is priced out. Unless you could find work in some of the less desirable places, but even they are subject to the same forces.
Now by letting the cities destroy themselves the Soros crowd hopes to make a buck off misery. Make them all Detroit and then make way for Delta City. Just have to clear out the holdouts.
Gasoline has not been the major expense of driving for quite some time. Back in the late 80s, when I was taking a tax deduction for operating a work vehicle, the IRS allowed a $0.50 per mile deduction in lieu of records of expenses. Which means it cost more than that. Given the price of fuel at that time, (I forget what it was) gasoline was a minor expense. Taxes, insurance, registration fees, depreciation, etc., in total costs a lot more than fuel.
Here’s an industry that actually fought back against the US fedgov’s jackboot on its neck:
‘The Biden administration delayed a decision on Wednesday about whether it would ban menthol cigarettes amid intense lobbying from tobacco companies, convenience stores and industry-backed groups.
‘Reynolds American has vowed to fight the ban all the way to the Supreme Court, a battle that could postpone implementation of the final prohibition rule for years.’ — NYT
https://archive.ph/rm0Hl#selection-529.0-533.138
Recall that the tobacco industry was plundered during the Clinton regime by a massive shakedown known as the tobacco settlement. It had nothing left to lose.
Here’s the next step in communist Peoples States:
‘A task force in Massachusetts, where flavored tobacco has been banned for years, recommended criminal charges for possession or sale of banned products.’
Auto makers had better get a clue, before IC vehicles become contraband.
The tobacco companies might prevail here since Obama smokes Newports.
The very first thing Obama did upon taking office was raise taxes on cigarette tobacco, the kind one uses to make their own cigarettes. Imagine my surprise when the tobacco I was using went from $13 for a 6 oz can to $26 a can. A direct tax on the poorest of us. Though I made my own for health reasons.
The Chinks love tobacco, banning tobacco equals annihilation.
The Pope banned tobacco. A very popular substance in Europe after Sir Walter Raleigh brought tobacco to the continent. Can’t have people buying tobacco products when the money spent belongs to the Papacy.
Potatoes from Machu Picchu got to Europe, finally. The French banned potatoes until they learned a lesson the hard way.
Native Americans are guilty of corrupting all civilizations over the entire planet.
Life goes on. Fire up the hookah. More Halvah!
Corn? Sunflowers? Both from the South American and North American continents.
Didn’t even have such crops before 1492 or so.
Columbus and his crew of sailors were going to be executed by the Caribs or just enslaved, probably maybe even eaten. We’ll work you to death, then eat you.
Caribs refused to be enslaved, whoddathunkit?
Christopher was an astronomer, knew the stars and the heavens. Columbus had the knowledge, informed the Caribs that in three days the moon would disappear from the sky. A lunar eclipse, the leader of the Caribs was impressed, believing Columbus was a god, Columbus and the crew were freed. Columbus sailed back home. True story.
Funny thing about that tobacco settlement. The states borrowed against the future payments to make up for shortfalls in their 1990s budgets. They assumed a certain percentage of people would smoke forever (turns out employers didn’t want to pay the insurance mafia’s ridiculous premiums and charged employees a massive smoking tax, getting many people to quit). Then everyone failed to anticipate vaping. Now the loans are coming due and they don’t have the money to pay, so they outlaw vaping, hoping to turn people back to the $10/pack smokes.
“It is difficult to make predictions, particularly about the future.” -Everyone from Mark Twain and Yogi Berra to Niels Bohr and Danish politician Karl Kristian Steincke
‘hoping to turn people back to the $10/pack smokes.’ — RK
States demanded the tobacco settlement on behalf of ‘sick smokers’ — then spent the plunder on anything but them.
Now the states need more sick smokers to service their debt. Who can possibly match such depraved cynicism?
‘A 149-Mile Range – Almost Twice As Long As Before’ — carscoops.com
Now you know why they call it the Lügenpresse.
Next up: the soy-boy author brags that ‘I stretched my member to 3 inches — almost twice as long as before.
>‘I stretched my member to 3 inches
And the chocolate ration was increased this month.
Long live Oceania.
This forced EV-ing is only possible because people have accepted the global warming/climate change narrative. Proving the mantra, a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.
Progressives play the long game and have been busy indoctrinating everyone to the point that it is just accepted fact that we are all going to die due to some change in climate.
Just like the VID, push back is what is required. Who now is respected that still fears the VID? Only the die hard psychotics are still lining up for shots.
Eventually, the majority will say F off to the EV coercion, but it must be done before it is firmly locked in place.
Proving the mantra, a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.
Case in point – “fast chargers”. They do not actually exist, but I hear people talk about them all the time and how they “fast charge” at charging stations. By now the term has become so ubiquitous that people actually believe fast chargers exist.
“Fast” isn’t an adjective, it is only a label. As opposed to a “home” charger, or a “standard” charger. The word fast has no meaning, any more than McDonald’s McRib, which is not made from pork rib meat. McSpam doesn’t evoke the same vision, so they went with rib instead.
Fast is obviously an adjective, and even if it in many cases is used merely as a label to describe a particular kind of charger, it nevertheless conveys the idea that charging is an operation that can be done quickly. As we all know, nothing could be further from the truth, hence there is no reason to accept the term “fast charger”. Someone who uses the term, if even only in the label sense that you’re describing, is essentially being a pro-EV propaganda parrot, even if only unwittingly so.
Hi RK,
I agree with Stufo in that the use of the term -“fast” – is disingenuous in context. It implies something that isn’t. It serves to get people used to thinking that a 30 minute wait is “fast.” So as to get them to accept waiting that long as normal.
That’s the objection here.
I think it means you can’t eat if you want to be able to afford the car and it’s charging equipment and the electricity.
Solving the obesity epidemic, one vehicle at a time!
You won’t believe what the world becomes by the time we’re done with it!
And, remember, the McRib went away “forever” last year.
Until it came back for another run last month. At least, it did here in Texas.